Oddball looks, mainstream mechanics

1951 Studebaker Commander from Hemmings Motor News

Choice of cars can come to define a person. Choosing a common collector car signifies that a person feels comfortable running with the pack, following others' lead and making life simple for himself. The less charitable might argue such a choice represents a weak constitution and underdeveloped imagination. Choosing a car that lies outside the bounds of orthodoxy certainly avoids the negative connotations of a common car, but carries with it its own drawbacks: ostracism by the "norms," fewer accolades, fewer offers of assistance from fellow gearheads.
Studebaker's products of the late 1940s and early 1950s were nothing if not unconventional. One of the first American carmakers to launch all-new cars following World War II, Studebaker embraced envelope styling, eschewed any notions of a long-hood/short-deck design with its Champion models and, with its Starlight coupes, inspired countless jokes of whether the car was coming or going.
Studebaker took that "advanced" styling a step further in 1950 with the bullet-nose design, inspired by jet-age airplanes and penned by Bob Bourke. "To many, it was the look of the future, a car Buck Rogers might drive," Pat Foster wrote in his latest book, Studebaker: The Complete History. "To others, it just looked bizarre." Perhaps for that reason, the bullet-nose design crash-landed after 1951, replaced with a rather--and there's that word again--conventional grille.
To Fran Marchand, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the bullet-nose design touched down far from bizarre. While wintering in Florida a couple of years ago, he came across one such bullet-nose, a 1951 Commander, in the somewhat rare convertible body style; of the 124,329 Commanders that Studebaker built that year, just 3,770 were convertibles.
So the Conformist Corps would have a hard time inducting Marchand into their ranks, but along came the question of reliability. Just how could he enjoy the droptop with parts under the hood that had toiled five and a half decades?
The previous owner, however, resolved the doubts of reliability and parts availability at once by jettisoning just about everything but the body and frame from the Commander. In place of the original overhead-valve, 120hp, 232.6-cu.in. V-8, he installed a rebuilt Chevrolet 350-cu.in. V-8, worth an estimated 300hp. No word on whether the Commander originally came with a standard three-speed manual, three-speed with overdrive or Automatic Drive--or even whether it had the optional Hill Holder--but the previous owner chucked it anyway for a Chevrolet four-speed and Hurst shifter, then mated a Ford 9-inch to the Commander's stock rear leaf springs. A Mustang II front suspension holds up the front end. Weld wheels add a bit of flash to the exterior, while a custom interior and gauges spruce up the interior.
And now, Marchand doesn't have to worry about the double edge. He can cruise--to the tune of 4,000 miles a year--with the appearance of unconventionality, but the reliability of commonplace.

This article originally appeared in the August, 2008 issue of Hemmings Motor News.